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NetSuite OneWorld drives global expansion for refresh renovations

New Zealand's Home Renovation Building Specialist Turns to NetSuite Cloud to Manage Head Office, Call Centre and 35 Franchisees

AUCKLAND, New Zealand, Aug. 11, 2015 /PRNewswire/—NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, today announced that Refresh Renovations, New Zealand's largest home renovation building specialists, has gone live on NetSuite OneWorld as its cloud-based business management suite to manage its head office operations in Auckland, call centre and 35 individually-owned franchised subsidiaries in New Zealand and Australia. The renovation franchise business replaced 26 instances of New Zealand on-premise accounting software Nimbus with a single instance of NetSuite OneWorld for financial consolidation, project management, accounting, multi-currency and multi-country tax management and multi-subsidiary support. Since deployment, Refresh Renovations has opened nine new franchise businesses, with the latest going live in Melbourne. NetSuite OneWorld provides multi-currency support for the company in two currencies (NZD and AUD) and has the capability to provide tax compliance support, which will also enable Refresh Renovations to easily expand internationally as it embarks on an ambitious growth trajectory over the next three years. A further 20 franchises are planned throughout Australia and New Zealand over the next 12 months that will all go live on NetSuite OneWorld.

Refresh Renovations is a home design and build renovation specialist established in 2010 by Traffic, New Zealand's leading business strategy and marketing firm. The company saw an opportunity in the renovation market to create a large 'design and build' brand that would transform the level of service and quality of renovations provided to consumers internationally. Globally, the renovation market is usually served by very small companies. Refresh Renovations developed a successful franchise business model, with an annual turnover of NZ$25 million and 35 renovation building franchisees in New Zealand and Australia managing the entire renovation process, from the initial design concept through to project completion and handover to the consumer. The company is now focused on taking this proven model to market globally, launching in Australia earlier this year, with plans to expand into the U.S. in 2016, then Canada, the U.K. and other countries to come in the near future.

Refresh Renovations was constrained by its previous Nimbus software, which made adding new franchises a complex and time-consuming process. Unable to support Refresh Renovations' multi-region and multi-currency requirements, the Nimbus software also required extensive configuration, limiting the company's ability to grow internationally. Refresh Renovations reviewed a number of solutions in the market, including SAP's Business ByDesign and simPRO, but chose NetSuite OneWorld in April 2014 for its ease of customisation, multi-subsidiary management, ease of use and its flexibility to help meet the company's future needs on a global scale. Refresh Renovations started moving franchisees onto NetSuite OneWorld in September 2014, with all of the 35 franchisees live by May 2015.

"We have always planned to take the business global—there's a really fragmented renovation market dominated by one-man band tradespeople, which leads to a lot of inefficiencies and a poor customer experience," said Jon Bridge, director of Refresh Renovations. "To support our franchisees and enable us to expand outside New Zealand at an ambitious pace, we really needed to have the right processes and technology in place, which we didn't. We never thought we would find a solution that would do everything we required, both on a local and a global level, but NetSuite exceeded all of our requirements."

NetSuite OneWorld provides Refresh Renovations with the following key benefits:

Easy multi-subsidiary management—NetSuite OneWorld enables Refresh Renovations to easily establish a master franchise level in any region, with new franchisees easily created as a new subsidiary that reports to the master franchise, while applying all the relevant functionality required. The company can now more easily manage, aggregate and support all of its franchisees. The head office also gains high-level visibility into franchisee revenues, margins, profits, conversion rates and other business metrics.

Complete management of all sales leads and projects—Refresh Renovations uses NetSuite to drive all leads for projects, through to the design and build process. When a lead comes into the company's call centre, the lead is directed through NetSuite to the relevant franchisee to progress forward. Refresh Renovations is developing renovation specific project management workflows and templates, so that once a renovation becomes a live project, franchisees will use NetSuite's project management functionality for all aspects of the project, from planning, costing and quoting to procurement, raising purchase orders, as well as handling all financial aspects of managing projects.

Significant time and cost savings—Refresh Renovations can now create a new subsidiary in NetSuite OneWorld and apply all the required settings within a few hours, rather than the two to three weeks it would have taken its previous IT provider to create a new or copy an old database every time and then connect it to the head office. This has saved the company NZ$3,000-NZ$4,000 each time it signs up a new franchise business. Refresh Renovations has also benefited considerably from savings in overhead costs since deploying NetSuite OneWorld, with the company reducing the cost of using and maintaining its previous system, which often had unpredictable server and programming costs.

Improved franchisee satisfaction—NetSuite OneWorld has helped Refresh Renovations' franchisees to become far more efficient by freeing them from the constraints of its previous IT system. Refresh Renovations has found that NetSuite is a far more intuitive system and reduces the amount of steps required to execute business processes. Refresh Renovations has also found NetSuite OneWorld to have a simpler and more attractive user interface than the old system, which is really important when the company is looking to attract new franchisees and to retain existing franchisees.

Superior customisation—Refresh Renovations is benefiting from the scalability of NetSuite OneWorld's powerful customisation capabilities, which enables the company to adapt the solution to its specific needs and to make certain changes without requiring programmers. This helps the company to continually improve when it gets feedback from its franchisee users. NetSuite OneWorld gives Refresh Renovations improved flexibility to meet its current needs and future growth aspirations.

"Our old IT system was a real sticking point for us and was the main thing our franchisees complained about last year, so it was a major priority for us to make some significant improvements to help them succeed," added Mr. Bridge. "Since we moved our franchisees onto NetSuite, it has taken away this negativity, so they can now get on and focus on their renovation businesses."

According to Mark Troselj, vice president and general manager for ANZ at NetSuite: "Franchise businesses like Refresh Renovations are increasingly turning to cloud-based business management tools to more effectively manage their global operations and multi-subsidiaries from any location. Not only can they gain critical insights and visibility into their operations in real-time to drive agile decision making that advances their businesses, but they are also provided with a flexible platform that enables them to roll out new initiatives in the future."

Today, more than 24,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organisations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financial suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.